On Azula
by Last of the Loneliness
Summary: Alone in the asylum, Azula finds herself with an unorthodox therapist.


_On Ozai_

She sits alone in her cell and stares out the window for days on end. Some nights, those men who are still loyal to Ozai drag her to see her father. They're drugging her food and she can't bend, not even breathe fire. Her arms are always still bound behind her back and she can't fight, can't even struggle.

She thought she would be safe from him since the Avatar won.

As for the asylum, she isn't getting better. She's getting worse. With nothing to do and no one to turn to, her thoughts are all that keep her company. She starts hallucinating. There isn't mail. Maybe those loyal to her father are stopping her letters. Probably everyone just hates her too much to write. She wonders if this is how her life will end. She doesn't want to die here, chained up in this infernal institution. Zuko has forgotten about her, it would seem. So have Mai and Ty Lee. Her only visitor is Ursa, and Ursa only comes in hallucinations.

Sometimes Azula thinks that, if her hands were unbound, she would kill herself. She doesn't have the desire to fight. What is the use in breaking out? Fire Lord Azula—the remnants of a pathetically shattered dream. Look at her now, alone in an asylum. What a Fire Lord she would make.

Then he comes.

He doesn't dress like anything she's ever seen before. He's always immaculate and always a perfectionist. He brings his own chair with him, sets it down in the middle of the floor, and then they lock eyes.

His gaze is like a black hole. She stares at him and thinks he's absorbing her soul. For a girl already in a fragile mental state, this is not the most comforting thing.

"Princess Azula. It is so good to meet you. My name is Hannibal Lecter. I am to be your psychiatrist for your stint here."

She stares at him blankly, her teeth bared. She's already so far in the corner that there's nowhere else to run.

"Are you unfamiliar with the term?" He doesn't smile, or frown, or move. He just stares at her, not intensely, but just presently. His lips never move, not once. It's terrifying. "I will be helping you come to terms with your mental state and hopefully recover enough to leave the asylum."

"You aren't from the asylum," Azula says, narrowing her eyes as she observes him. She smells something. Is it him? It must be. She hasn't smelled anything in months.

"No," Hannibal agrees, crossing his hands in his lap. "I've come from somewhere else for you. I knew I had to treat you."

"Azula, you should listen to him," Ursa says suddenly, moving from her usual spot just behind Azula's line of sight. Azula jerks abruptly to stare up at her mother's face. Hannibal shows interest for the first time. His patient is hallucinating.

"Let him help you," Ursa urges, placing a hand on her shoulder. "You need help, darling. Please, do this, just for me."

With her hands bound, Azula has no other way to lash out than with her head. She bangs it toward her mother; Ursa disappears, and Azula's head collides with the stone. She winces and rolls her head back, resting with her eyes shut before she swings back around to face Hannibal.

"Do whatever you like with me," she says dully. "Just like everybody else."

Hannibal's lips give the faintest sign of a smile. "I suspect we'll get along quite well, Azula."

It's a week later the next time he comes. He brings a gift with him this time: a small plastic box. Azula doesn't recognize the material when he places it in her lap.

"Allow me to assist you."

Azula shuffles to her feet and Hannibal stands behind her, unlacing the straps of her straightjacket one by one until the hated garment falls to the floor.

Her arms feel dead and lifeless. It's been so long since she's had full movement of her limbs. Azula instinctively holds two fingers up, but the energy doesn't flow right. It's then that she remembers that she's been drugged.

Maybe she's forgotten how to lightningbend after being locked up here so long.

Hannibal watches the spectacle without movement or comment. When the light goes out of her eyes and Azula sits again, he offers her the box again. Her obedient fingers pry the lid open.

"You brought me food?"

"I do love cooking with patients," Hannibal says, sitting opposite her and crossing his legs. He offers her chopsticks. She accepts. "But as you can't leave, cooking for you will have to do."

Azula sniffs it tentatively. She's used to inspecting every meal carefully for signs of poison. But it's only habit, and when she smells it she doesn't care if it's poison. She's been living on gruel, bread and water, and this is a fully-cooked meal. The sausage by itself smells heavenly, let alone the sauce carefully poured over the top. The bright, decorative orange completes the dish.

"I thought I would start with something simple. I suspect they haven't been feeding you well, and I didn't want to upset your system." The concern comes so easily to his voice. Azula doesn't voice her thoughts—this is simple?—and doesn't meet his eyes. "Perhaps, in due time, we can work our way up to something heartier, hmm?"

She doesn't respond. She's eating. Hannibal's lips curl upwards, but she's looking at the food and can't see him.

"Now." He sits back against the chair and settles himself comfortably. He's still observing her. He doesn't look away. His attention is always wholly for his patient. "Let's discuss your father, shall we?"

She pauses mid-chew to lift her gaze. Her eyes are dead as she stares at him. Anyone else would be fazed. He betrays nothing.

"Former Fire Lord Ozai, imprisoned not far from here, am I right?" He knows he's right. She knows that he knows.

"Too close." They're perhaps the most lucid words she's uttered in months. For some reason, discussing the most horrific things comes most easily to her. It's the little things that send Azula over the edge, send her into screaming tantrums and dark places she doesn't want to go. She doesn't know why she's talking. Certainly she doesn't trust this man. But really, what does she have to lose?

"How does it feel, being left to him, Azula?" Hannibal asks. She doesn't have to explain. He knows. He always knows.

She's shaking. She speaks around the bite of sausage in her mouth and her words come out garbled. "I thought I would be safe. I should have known better. I knew the day I fought Zuzu at the Western Air Temple. He hates me. They all hate me. They've all abandoned me. They don't care what Daddy does to me anymore. I'll never get out of here. Never."

"Why do you think they've abandoned you?"

Azula lets out a harsh, unhinged laugh. She gestures one hand wildly. "Look around! Look at me! Look at this!"

"Maybe they haven't abandoned you," Hannibal says delicately. "Perhaps they're allowing it to happen."

Azula's face freezes in a mask of horror. "No…I can't…you can't…don't say that! Get away from me! Don't ever say that again! Spirits. Oh. _Oh._ This is my punishment, isn't it? I deserve this, don't I?"

"Do you think you deserve this, Azula?"

She stares at him, mouth open, for a few seconds. Then her face twists completely, and she isn't a scared girl in the cell. She's the girl that Ursa called a monster. She's the girl that shot down the Avatar. She's the girl who tried to kill her brother more than once and would do so again in a heartbeat.

"_No_."

Hannibal smiles.

"Do you hate your father?" He tilts his head, gauging her reaction. Her face assumes its former stone-like façade, and then she begins laughing coarsely.

"Yes. Oh, yes."

"When did you realize you hated him?"

Azula doesn't have to think. It's something she's thought about a million times before. Yet she still pauses before she answers, her teeth playing over her lip and then sinking in hard enough to draw blood.

"I was twelve. I had just come home from fighting in the Earth Kingdom. I hadn't seen him in seven months. I had grown. He invited me to the throne room and had me strip, like he always did. Then he looked at me, and circled me, and kissed me." Azula narrates her story without any emotion. Her eyes are flat. "When he was raping me, he told me I looked like my mother." Her voice twists into laughter. She's mocking herself.

She doesn't know why she's so talkative. She doesn't trust this man. She will never trust him. Her every instinct is urging her that there is something wrong about him.

But maybe that's exactly the reason she finds herself opening up.

"Your father has committed uncountable crimes against an uncountable number of people," Hannibal says calmly. "Do you think he has gotten his comeuppance?"

"No." She barely chokes out the answer this time. "He's—he gets _fevers_? He deserves to be tortured every day for the rest of his life. He deserves death a thousand times over. The Avatar didn't show mercy. He just didn't understand. Ozai's powerful in here too. Even if it's just power over me."

"Why are you so weak, Azula?"

She doesn't hear his voice. It's her own question, the question that's echoed within her mind over and over again since the day she entered the asylum. Why can't she escape? Why is she broken? Why did she lose to that stupid Water Tribe girl?

"Because I let myself be."

Hannibal stands and removes the empty container from her hands. He sets it on his chair and picks up her straightjacket from the floor. She slides her arms into it without resistance. His fingers are talented at strapping each restraint closed. Azula hangs her head low, black hair shading her face.

"You are letting yourself be," Hannibal whispers, lowering his head to just above his ear. He draws back and stands in the doorway of the cell. She's not looking at him. Already she's regretting everything she told him and wishes she could take it all back. Putting secrets into a man like him isn't like putting secrets into other people. He knows precisely what they mean.

"Azula, if you think your father deserves to be tortured, then you yourself must be the one to bring about that fate," he says with an air of finality. "If you can let yourself." He smiles and inclines his head to her before leaving the cell.

"I will see you next week."

* * *

**A/N:**

**..._I don't even know what I'm doing anymore_**


End file.
